Cousin is one serious scrapbooker

The last place I planned to end up while on vacation was at a scrapbooking shop in the little town near our cottage rental.As I glossed over the papers, glitters, templates and mysterious little tools, my craft-loving cousin found herself in scrapbooking heaven.But I am a patient person and soon began chatting with the woman in the shop, telling her where we were from, commenting on the gorgeous weather (better enjoyed on the beach, I might add), those types of things."My cousin is the scrapbooker. I'm not," I told her, as if she hadn't figured this out by now."What are your hobbies?" she inquired.My mind went blank. Hobbies? Hobbies?"Um, um, I don't really have any," I mumbled.Which is NOT really true. It just felt that way at that time in that shop.Thinking about this later, I realized that at this point in my life I don't really have any craft-type hobbies. Sure, I venture into Michaels and Jo-Ann stores, and last week I even stopped by Hobby Lobby at my daughter's request.In the past I have needle-pointed, sewn a bit and, way back as a teen, went through my decoupage phase. I was into bread-baking for a while as an adult and, at one point in my life, very much into photography.But most of my "free" time these days is devoted to home stuff - which I really enjoy. Decorating, redecorating, working in the garden. I love to entertain and wish we had more time to do so. Still, I admire my scrapbooking cousin's creativity and marvel at the results, page after page.I admire it so much that one afternoon at the cottage, as the others scrambled down to the beach, I stayed by her side as she attempted to photograph ... a caterpillar!One of the kids had pointed it out to her and she grabbed her camera. "It won't focus," she said.The caterpillar or the camera? I wondered.She showed me the blurry images so I grabbed my iPhone and snapped a really nice photo of the fuzzy fella. Not good enough, I guess. Before long (OK, at this point it felt like days), she figured out what she had been doing wrong and took more pictures.Finally, she was satisfied, so she and I headed to the beach - with the camera.These efforts did not go unnoticed by my daughter, who recently put it this way: "She takes pictures of every 'scrapbookable moment.' " Someday I am sure I will see the scrapbook pages she compiled from our days at the cottage. I'm curious how she will work in that caterpillar along with all those images of sand, soggy beach towels and laughing kids.All scrapbookable, I believe.